Here’s a treat for you this Samhain Season. A little over a year ago, I was able to chat with the mighty Bill Steer of Carcass. This interview was tied up for a bit and I am extremely excited share it with you now.
If you are already here, I don’t have to explain to you about how important his contributions to extreme Metal music have been over the years. Being a huge Carcass fan, I was pretty nervous to interview him but he quickly calmed that fear. Bill may be one of the most humble and genuine artists that I have interviewed over the years.
Trve Kvlt Coffee: Your new album, Torn Arteries was finally released in September which was pushed out for over a year. What was it like to have to sit on that album for so long?
Bill Steer: Well, in all truth, it’s probably closer to 2 years since we finished the thing. I can’t even remember the original release date. Even before Covid happened the release date was pushed back a couple of times for one reason or another. Around March last year the world changed and we knew we would have to sit on this a while longer. We certainly weren’t alone in that, it seemed like there were quite a few bands and artists in a similar position. You couldn’t really start feeling sorry for yourself. It was a minor inconvenience compared to what some people are going through.
TKC: Looking on the bright side you did manage to release the Despicable EP last year in its place to sort of tide the fans over.
BS: Exactly. The original intention was for the Despicable EP to follow the album much in the same way as Surgical Steel had an EP come out a few months later. Then once the virus kicked in, Nuclear Blast decided to reverse everything and they wanted to wait for us to be ready to tour before they released the album. They decided to stick the EP out to keep a bit of interest in the band. Of course the strange thing now is that the album is out and we still won’t be quite ready to tour. I’m still glad though, it’s a tremendous relief to see this thing out there.
TKC: Definitely! I love the new album, I’ve already listened to it a few times. One thing I loved with the Despicable release, there was a bundle that included a face mask.
BS: Really? You know I had forgotten all about that. I’m always the last to know about some of these promotional ideas.
TKC: I thought that if any band was going to have some sort of surgical style mask, it had to be Carcass.
BS: They think of everything. I mean, I just recently heard about this dinner plate thing. I actually thought someone was winding me up on the phone. After we finished the interview,I checked it out online. That’s crazy.
TKC: I read that the album’s title, Torn Arteries, came from an early demo from (original drummer) Ken Owen.
BS: This is going way back. We were teenagers in school together. Sometimes he would bring in sets of lyrics he had written, they were almost like poetry because we didn’t really have an active band at the time. I think we were around 15 or so. Some of those sets of lyrics worked their way into early Carcass stuff when we actually started the band up properly. I do remember him bringing in this tape. It was a very crude recording but it distorted so brutally it sounded a lot bigger and threatening than it really was. Essentially, it was a guy playing Spanish guitar in his bedroom and overdubbing some drums which were really books and then he was screaming over top of it. It was a pretty out there sound that he had recorded. I wish I still had the tape. It might be in the bottom of a box somewhere in my parent’s attic. Years later I mentioned this recording to Jeff (Walker). I think he was quite taken at the title and the whole story behind it.
TKC: That’s really cool to hear. I think it’s great that you are still able to include Ken in some way.
BS: He’s always there in some form, he was in the band from the very start and he’s on that initial run of albums. What he brought to the band and his approach to music, there is always going to be an element of that. If you have so much time with somebody, as a friend or as a musician in a band, they are going to rub off on you and that influence stays.
TKC: Carcass has had some history of incredibly gory album covers. The cover for Torn Arteries is pretty unique. Where did the idea for this album cover come from?
BS: I genuinely have no idea. I didn’t realize Jeff was going to do this. I think he had been collaborating with an artist friend in Poland, a man whose name I still can’t pronounce properly unfortunately. Looking at the finished results, I’m guessing they spent a while working on this thing. That first that Dan Wilding and myself knew about it was when Jeff presented the finished article. The one thing that we felt was that we didn’t want anything that felt too generic, Jeff worked really hard in that direction for something that was going to stand out. Off the back of that naturally you are going to polarize your audience. From what I gather there is a real mix of opinion, some people enjoy the fact that it is so different and there are other people who just think it looks terrible. It seems to have gotten people talking, which is probably what they were after
TKC: I remember first looking at it and thinking it was a little simple and then it struck me. That heart is made out of vegetables. I thought that was very clever.
BS: It seems that there are a few people saying, “Oh god. Now they are forcing a vegan message on us!” Which couldn’t be further from the truth as far as I’m concerned. I can’t speak for Jeff but I imagine he feels the same way. Whether it’s his lyrics or the kind of imagery he does for the band it seems he rather have people come to their own conclusions about it. It is there for people to interpret whatever they wish into it. Once you put something out into the public domain, you no longer have full control, people will take it into interesting directions, stuff you wouldn’t even think of.
TKC: I love some of the dark humor that Carcass has with some of your song titles such as,”Elenor Rigamortis,”
BS: Yeah, I’d say it’s probably safe to say that there has been a subtle humor running though all of the Carcass items lyrically. It was very obvious to us as teenagers when we first started. The first 2 albums were the three of us (Bill, Jeff and Ken) all writing lyrics. On the third album Jeff had kind of made that his own and it’s been that way ever since. Dark humor is a big thing for him.
TKC: Since your first album, your sound has always been evolving. On this new album, you have some incredible guitar work here. The intro to “The Scythe’s Remorseless Swing?” is fantastic.
BS: Thanks. It seemed to me we couldn’t justify making a new album unless it was genulily new music. There are some elements of our sound that are just corner stones and they will probably always be there but equally I think in order to move forward you have to bring in slightly new things and it doesn’t need to be anything radical. We are not the type of group to experiment but we also can’t face the idea of looking over our shoulders to plagiarize thighs we did in the past. It seems to me every record we’ve done is a few steps on from the previous one.
TKC: How does it feel to remain possibly more popular than ever playing this type of extreme music?
BS: It’s remarkable. It’s something none of us would have expected going back to the late 80’s and early 90’s. It’s important not to take it for granted, we’ve been very fortunate. In the days when we were still playing festivals and club dates the front rows would tend to be people who were too young to have ever seen us in our original form. What you would naturally get of that is that the music has stood the test of time somewhat. It’s not just that, “you had to be there” music for people of a certain age.
TKC: Since we are getting ready for the spooky season, I wanted to make sure I asked what some of your favorite horror films are.
BS: Crikey. I have not watched anything of that nature for so many years. What would even be considered horror now? Obviously, I’m at an age where films were broadly considered horror movies. I’m guessing for younger people a horror film has to have a lot of blood and guts right? The only films that stayed with me from my youth were The Omen and The Exorcist. They are sort of mainstream films but this is something extremely dark about them and they do stand up for repeated viewing.
TKC: Are you looking forward to getting back on the road and playing shows again?
BS: Absolutely. In the present day things are looking decent here in Britain. It feels like we are on a very gradual slow return to normality. No idea on how long that might take. We do have one date for a festival in Yorkshire in November. We are not going to assume anything or get carried away with ourselves. Until we are told otherwise we are going to start rehershing again and try to shake off some of the rust